


Sol Invictus

by archea2



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, M/M, Saturnalia, Season/Series 15, Sibling Incest, Yule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: Chuck may have ruined Christmas for Sammy, but Dean will be damned (again) if he lets Him ruin December 25.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Sol Invictus

**Author's Note:**

> So I'd meant to post this yesterday, which - of course - was the day my Internet connection went rogue on me. Ah well. A merry winter to all my fellow shippers and let's hang in there, guys. However meh that finale goes, we'll always have fan fiction!

December.

The winter light squeezes itself into a smaller and smaller frame - the sun rolled up into a grumpy ball, not unlike the hedgehogs Sam loved as a kid, whenever Dad’s hunting got full-on rural. 

On the 24th, Eileen leaves. She doesn’t say why, and Sam doesn’t ask - the agreement still stands - but trades her hug, wistful, for his, tender, and makes sure she goes prepared. When Dean seeks him out later, spluttering with good will, Sam shrugs. He told Dean it wasn’t happening, didn’t he? 

Yeah, he did, but he also told Dean _Back to the Future II_ sucked and it had holosharks and insta-pizza, so it’s not like Sam’s word is the truth incarnate and what the hell, the day before Christmas? Seriously, Sammy?

What Christmas, Dean?

What Christ - is he - mother of - how can he - Jesus Ch - _oh._

And Dean drops silent, but his face gears into more volubility than Sam is ready to take on, and so he turns on his boot heel and makes for the woods that cradle their home. The trees are nine parts leafless, the sky a cross between lead and mackerel, but the dour tang of cold is what he needs. Sam walks the woods until the sky has grown a darker grey, aware that there is no out-jogging the emptiness within; but still using the adrenalin as a stopgap.

Once upon a time, Sam loved Christmas too. 

In the abstract, that is. The execution, Dad-style, was always a letdown, but it never even dented the idea. The belief, wedged in Sam’s soul, that once upon a time God had renounced all of his crushing Goddity so that he could partake of his mud monkeys’ - his finite, flawed, fallible children’s - vulnerability. It chimed in with Sam’s notion of empathy; it swelled his faith that, as dark as God’s green Earth had become, tainted with monsters of all stripes, God still got it. Free will might have entailed Chuck taking a step back, but He still loved His Winchesters like He loved His humans. Like no others, because He knew them from the inside.

Never mind that the one time Sam gave zest and jollity a go was when Dean was officially damned. It was a bittersweet, tears-under-the-tinsel wake, but it was still Christmas. That night, long after the game was over and the telly screen snowy with static, he’d joined Dean on the couch and let his arms give the condemned man their best comfort, no words attached. They had been flawed, he and Dean, they had been vulnerable, their heads swirled by rum and borrowed time, but the booze had rekindled a light never quite gone under the years’ bushel. Had kindled a great thirsty joy that, the more they drank from it, the thirstier and better (and messier - the couch nowhere near enough for two). So strong and pure and so, so good, that Sam had cherished his hangover like a keepsake. 

And, okay, a roll on the floor with his brother did _not_ qualify as the Good News that a Pastor Jim or a Father Lucca would have advertised, but it spoke of faith. Somehow Sam’s imperfect love had reached out to the more sacred love in his soul, and the two had, like, high-fived through the years...

...until Chuck made Christmas a fraud in hindsight, and Dean compounded His felony by trying to hook Sam with Eileen. 

Now Sam walks faster, his breath shorter, until his cheeks are running with sweat, his heart hurrying to collapse point. Only then - blindly, reluctantly - does he take his steps home. The cold envelops him like a cloak of invisibility, turning the sweat into a chill. He didn’t exactly bundle up before he went on his spree of spleen. Time to slinker back into the bunker, and -

The tangerine glow hits him ten steps down the stairs. Sam blinks. This has nothing to do with their Art Nouveau lamps - this is the fiercer yellow of an open fire, raising its smoky, sap-crackling scent of wood on the flame. For one startled pause, Sam wonders if the bookshelves have caught fire. But the smell is… clean. Sam can tell Hellfire from singed flesh from witch tinder, each nuance stamped into him ever since his own baptism by fire. This isn’t it. This is how happiness smelled on the rare, treasured times when Dean agreed to trade Vegas week for a hike in the American wilderness. Only, Sam had never thought of connecting it with the bunker, which can boast of two (2) matching chimney pots and a grand total of no fireplace.

He plods down the stairs on legs stiff from walking. Crosses over to the library and what, up to now, qualified as the telescope booth. Only, no longer. The telescope has vamoosed. Ditto the velvet red curtains guarding the operture. The alcove is now a hearth, its cavity filled by a huge, blazing log of Texan pine. Miraculously enough, the smoke is eddying _up_ and skyward instead of spilling _out_ , i. e. all over the near, precious, irreplaceable bookshelves crammed with paper archives.

“Dean!”

“Present,” his brother says, his voice lower than is par for Dean. He’s gone and fetched the plaid blanket from Baby and he’s spread it carefully on their terrazzo floor, in front of the fire.

“How,” Sam says, weakly, every offensive urge weakened by the log’s enticing scents. He shivers, as his body drinks in the beautiful warmth and chases it with a shot of _luminous_. “Just - how? And when?”

“Dude, you were gone four hours. You missed on the nightfall?”

Sam shakes his head numbly. And then, because Sam is nothing if not logical, even at his most nihilistic... “The telescope,” he insists. “Where the heck did you put the telescope? At least say you didn’t wrestle that Godzilla all by yourself.”

“That would be me,” a voice utters from the bookshelves, which Sam now sees are festooned with deep-green leaves of ivy, twisted this way and that, and the paler greens of mistletoe. And now Castiel steps into visibility, outlined by the fire in his back, the only shadow across his face that of a smile. 

Sam doesn’t think. He, too, walks forward - right into his friend’s welcome.

“The telescope is in your bedroom.” Before Sam can finish his gasp, the speaker lifts a hand. “Until you wish it back in place. If grace can move mountains, it can relocate a” (quote marks) “great big phallic whatchamacallit” (quote marks) “temporarily.” (Pause.) “In the words of Dean.” (Pause.) “He talked me into carrying the log. I talked him out of drenching it in lighter fluid.”

(Meaning, they talked. Finally. Sam will take in the telescope as a bedfellow, if that's what it takes to help bygones be bygones.)

“They had a wee help from Below.” And Rowena perches her long form on the table, her feet aligned daintily together, the curtains’ red velvet magically subdued to her girlish curves. “You know me, Samuel - playing with fire, my eternal motto.” 

Sam turns in Castiel’s grip, his grin irrepressible. It is too soon to name the elusive bond between them. A witch by nature, she would laugh at his attempts to pin her down by word or deed. He is not carnally attracted to her, and she is too much of a free spirit to claim him as kin by proxy. But is he glad she’s here? Hell yeah.

“Sam.” Dean is holding a glass out - not their cut-glass tumbler, but a rarer piece, etched with gold. The liquid inside is golden too. “I, uh. I know I’m kind of springing this on you, but drink and hear me out, okay?” 

Sam nods above the drink. Bourbon, not whisky. Thicker, more grounded, with a fire of its own. It courses down his tense spine as he draws a chair near the fire, not quite ready to share the blanket with Dean, but agreeable to listening. It’s been a long day’s hike. And that Dean had a plan for him that came with fire, friends and shared creature comforts is leaving Sam tender from more than exhaustion.

“So, that Christmas thing - I get it. I get that Chuck ruined it for you. Us. And that’s one more reason to jail his assbutt, as Cas would say.” 

(Grave nodding from Cas.)

“But then I thought - fuck Chuck. Because we don’t need him to celebrate on December 25.”

 _When it comes to the lore_ , Sam once told his self-depreciating brother, _you’re the best_. Slowly, unhesitantly, he lowers himself from his chair to the warm blanket and Dean’s warmer side. He holds the glass out to Dean’s mouth, and watches Dean’s smile grow wet and fragrant from the liquid gold. Then he drinks, and passes the glass to Rowena, who shares it with Cas. 

“Damn right,” he says. “Saturnalia, then - if that’s all right with you, Cas.”

“I’m a renegade,” Cas reminds them, standing ramrod-straight next to Rowena. “I might as well be a Pagan entity tonight, and celebrate Sol Invictus with you.”

“The unconquered sun.” Sam lets his gaze be a willing captive to the fire, a riot of light playing up and down the log. It speaks of life, of resilience, of their flawed, fallible planet seeing another day. He can drink to that. And he does, once Dean has topped the glass again with the Bourbon. 

“To the Light side,” he tells Dean.

“To the Light side, Princess.” Dean tips the glass, sensuously, sucking in the side where Sam drank before him. It’s a bit gross and unspeakbly arousing, and Sam’s brain is doing its honest best to remind him of their guests. But. Saturnalia. “And Queen, and rebel Stormtrooper.”

“Hotcha!” Rowena beams back.

It’s more of a freeform not-Chuck feast. They have their log. And their toasts, plenty of them. Cas mentions roast suckling pig as _the_ Saturnalian splash, which Rowena counters with boar’s head marinated in wine and sugar, until Dean sets the matter straight by ordering sweet-and-sour pork. They try roasting apples on the log, which goes as well as expected. At one point, there’ role reversal as a tribute to the Ancient Romans and it turns out that Rowena rocks a blue tie. (Cas does not rock a velvet gown.) At 11, Jody sends triple vows from the girls and herself. At 12, Sam sends stoic grief to the winds and toasts Dad until he’s choking on a red bell pepper, which is when Dean has to be talked out of yelling “IT’S NOT WISE TO UPSET A WINCHESTER, FUCKER” up a still blazing chimney. Some time around 2 a.m., Sam thinks, there may have been a group hug. 

It’s the best evening he’s had since Dad blew into town last year, and that’s for sure. Sam smiles and closes his eyes, suddenly drowsy.

The log is nine parts embers when he wakes up, nestled on Dean’s chest: both limp-limbed, with no witness and no clear idea where one ends and the other begins on the faithful plaid. Sam delegates a questing hand; finds out they’re still clothed.

“Mmmmm,” Dean intones, capsized under his chest. “Merry Yulalia, you.”

“Likewise. And... thanks, man. I needed this.”

Dean grunts, wriggling and kicking until their various arms and legs are rearranged into something less reminiscent of a devil’s trap. Then he sighs, just a little. The sound is gossamer-light, a nonentity to any ear but Sam’s, who has had fifteen years to read Dean’s mouth by play.

He kisses the mouth, firmly, before he speaks his own lighthearted words. 

“Hey. You do know Yule lasts until January, right? You’ll have plenty of opportunity to make whoopee.”

And Dean has heard him, no doubt, because he makes Sam’s point clear by doing something utterly, delighfully Yulesque with his tongue and Sam’s own. But then he pulls back, a sudden sober man.

“Sam Invictus.”

“Sorry?”

“You,” Dean says, poking very gently at Sam’s chest. The godhole, which Sam now hopes has been conveying last night’s every iota to Chuck, flutters at the touch. _Flutters_ , Sam repeats to himself, incredulous, and bites his lip. Trust Dean to sex up every inch of Sam, down to those he shares with the Almighty.

“Unconquered. No matter what He says.”

“To the victor the spoils,” Sam murmurs, and lets himself fall back on the blanket, legs and arms spread out, laughing as Dean covers him eagerly . There's a kiss, there's a fire, there's a Yulalian dawn with their names on it - and they will make sure it is claimed. 


End file.
